


finding home

by nbwriter



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Sam Wilson-centric, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 16:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18391805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbwriter/pseuds/nbwriter
Summary: It's a long road home. Will Sam and Bucky ever make it there?





	finding home

This was not how Sam had thought he would spend nearly a year of his life. He knew right away that he would do anything for Steve, had been sure of it as soon as his dumbass had showed up on his back porch, covered in soot and flashing him those big blue eyes. Hell, he’d even joined the Avengers for the guy. But this? This was crazy.

Steve wasn’t a spy, never had been. He wasn’t what someone would call “subtle.” Sam wasn’t much better himself, but Natasha? She was the best there was, and although she’d never tell Steve this, she’d told Sam that there was no way they were going to find Barnes, not if he didn’t want them to. Barnes, she’d said, had been the one to train her, back in the Red Room. For all her tricks, Barnes invented those tricks. He really was a ghost.

Deep down, Sam thought that Steve was aware of that fact too. But, bleeding heart that he was, he couldn’t give up on his oldest friend, not if he thought there was even the slightest chance that he needed help. From the little that Sam had seen of the Winter Soldier, he didn’t think there was any chance that he couldn’t take care of himself. But that wasn’t the type of help that Steve meant. He was still holding onto hope that maybe there was something left of the Bucky he knew. Sam wasn’t so sure but, _he pulled me out of the river, Sam,_ Steve had said, his gaze imploring Sam to understand why needed to find him so badly. 

It seemed that finding Barnes was the only thing Steve had wanted for himself in a long time and so Sam had let himself get roped into the wild goose chase.

And, sure. It was seedy motel room after seedy motel room but it wasn’t all bad. Barnes sure had been some interesting places. First Poland, then Austria, then China, and so on. Everywhere he went, Barnes left behind a pile of bodies and the smoldering remains of a HYDRA base. Whether he was looking for something or just carrying out his personal vendetta, Sam wasn’t sure. But either way he was making quick work of the organization that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been trying to stop for the better part of 70 years. If he weren’t wanted for countless assassinations over the last century, he thought they would have put Barnes on the payroll. 

Sam finally caught up to Barnes in Mexico City. It was just him this time, rolling solo. Sometimes he traveled with Steve, sometimes not. Duty had called and this time Steve had answered, had had to travel back to the States to help organize the new Avengers. Steve had said that Sam could come back with him, but he could tell that all Steve really wanted was for someone to stay on the trail. There was no harm in checking out one more lead before he went home.

As always, Sam got there too late, the only thing to greet him being the cooling ashes of what once had been the base. Barnes was a quick little bastard, to be sure.  
On his way back to the motel he was staying at, Sam called Steve from the car. “Hey, you got a minute?”

 _“Yeah, yeah. ‘Course I do_ ,” Steve answered. _“What did you find?”_

Damnit, even when he couldn’t see his face, Sam still knew the exact expression he was making right now, that little hopeful one that would quickly shift into looking like a kicked puppy when he had to be the bearer of bad news. “No luck, Steve, I’m sorry,” he replied sympathetically, and Sam swore he could hear the heartbreak in the following long pause. “...Steve?”

_“I’m here… Better luck next time, yeah? Have a safe trip home.”_

“Yeah, right. See you soon, Steve.” There was a click on the other end signalling that Steve had hung up the phone. Sam had really wanted a win for Steve this time. Not that he had expected it, but still. 

Pulling up at the motel, Sam let the car idle for a few moments before switching off the ignition. He’d return the rental car on his way to the airport tomorrow morning. For now, he just wanted to try and get some sleep and be dead to the world for the next 12 hours. He made his way into the grimy little motel, fishing out his room key from his pocket and stepping into the dark room after having unlocked it.

He was reaching for the light switch when a sudden noise nearly caused him to have a heart attack.

“Don’t,” a quiet voice croaked from the corner of the room.

“Son of a bitch!” he swore, his hand flying immediately to the .9 mm that was currently in its holster on his belt. Sam didn’t always carry a handgun, but he figured that chasing after potentially crazed ex-assassins warranted having something to defend yourself. Especially when said potentially crazed ex-assassin snuck into your motel room in the dead of night.

Squinting, Sam could just barely make out the shape of Barnes sitting completely upright in the chair next to the bed. There was a quiet click and the bedside lamp switched on, Sam’s gaze stuck on the person in front of him as he allowed the door to swing shut behind him. 

He looked good, all things considered. Well, better than he had when he was with HYDRA. His gaze seemed calm, not like that of a robotic killing machine. His hair was a little shorter now, not quite touching his shoulders. And whereas he had been deathly pale before, a likely sign that they hadn’t been feeding him as well as they should, there was a healthy amount of color in his cheeks now. For the first time, Sam could see something of that face that had stared out at him first from his high school American history textbook, and then from the exhibit Steve had dragged him to to convince him of why they were doing this. This person in front of him was Bucky Barnes. Maybe not completely, but he was far from the Winter Soldier either. 

He wasn’t sure how long the two of them just stared at each other in the dim light of the motel room, but Barnes was the first one to break the silence. “Are you just gonna stand there, or…”

It took Sam a few more moments to collect his thoughts. “Well, shit, excuse me if I wasn’t expecting to see you here. We have been chasing your ass all around the world for almost a year now. I didn’t think you’d just pull a supervillain move, sitting in the dark all creepily waiting for me.”

Sam could have sworn he saw the corners of Barnes’s lips curl up just a fraction, into something resembling a smile, but then just as soon as he saw it, it was gone. “Why are you here anyway?”

“I couldn’t reach,” Barnes said simply, as if that was supposed to clear everything up.

Parting his lips to speak, Sam had just inhaled a breath when he saw Barnes lift his arm up, the right one, and Sam could see why he was sitting completely straight up in the chair. There, below his arm and in the middle of his back was a bullet wound, his dark gray t-shirt turned even darker with a bloodstain. He was sitting up in the chair, slightly leaned forward, to keep his blood soaked shirt from touching the fabric of the armchair. Huh. An assassin with some manners.

The next words passed Sam’s lips before he could stop them. “I thought you were supposed to be good at your job, how did you get shot?” For some reason, he wasn’t afraid of riling Barnes up. Barnes seemed level-headed and Sam wagered there was a very low chance that he would shank him with a pocket knife.

A look of irritation briefly passed over Barnes’s face. “I took out how many bases and I get shot once? I’d say that my track record is pretty good.”

“Better than Steve’s, anyway,” Sam snorted, and he could see that Barnes relaxed again at that comment. “Well, guess I better patch you up. Steve’d never forgive me if I finally caught up to you only to let you bleed out in front of me.”

There was a pause and Barnes’s voice sounded off when he spoke again. “You’re going to tell Steve?”  
Sam, who had already started towards his pack to retrieve the medkit he always had for emergencies, furrowed his brow as he heard Barnes say that. “I… Well, yeah. Was planning on it, anyway. Why? There some reason you don’t want me to?”

Come to think of it, Sam wasn’t completely sure why Barnes had showed himself to him in the first place and not Steve. Sure, it was a matter of convenience that Sam was the one in Mexico, but even the excuse about needing help seemed kinda bullshit. Sam had had to do field medicine before, and he was sure that if Barnes had tried hard enough that he could have patched himself up. So, why did he come to Sam? Maybe he was lonely.

That thought hit Sam harder than he thought it would, his heart squeezing painfully. 

Barnes had a dark look on his face, his head leaned slightly forward so his hair served as somewhat of a curtain, obscuring part of his expression. “It’s… easier with you,” he muttered, almost as though he were embarrassed to be saying this. “No expectations.”

As much as Steve would have said otherwise, Sam knew that he had at least something in mind of how reuniting with Barnes would go. It would be impossible for him not to build the moment up, having been thinking about little else since the Triskelion. No wonder Barnes was a little nervous about seeing Steve again, no doubt worried that he wouldn’t live up to his expectations. 

But Sam knew the last thing Barnes needed right now was for anyone to pity him, so instead of telling him false reassurances that everything with Steve would be okay he said, “Get your Terminator ass over here,” as he gestured to the bed. He took a seat on the bed, facing Barnes. As much as he tried to hide it, Sam could see the pained expression on Barnes’s face as he stood and moved towards the bed, sitting on the other side with his back faced to Sam.

And then he just sat there. Sam paused, the needle and thread that he had been in the process of threading just held in his hands. “Uh, you forgetting something there, Barnes?” That earned him a slightly dirty expression thrown over Barnes’s shoulder, but he did begin shifting to remove his shirt.

But the low noises of pain and discomfort that Barnes was letting out as he tried to twist his arms back to remove his shirt were too much for Sam to handle. Setting aside the needle and thread, he finally reached out to touch Barnes, his hands braced on his shoulders to keep him from moving anymore. “Fuck, okay, don’t hurt yourself. I’ll cut your shirt and then you can keep one of mine, okay?”

Barnes seemed satisfied by this, and once Sam was sure he wasn’t going to try anymore gymnastics to remove his shirt, he lifted his hands from his shoulders and retrieved the scissors from the medkit. He made quick work of the shirt, deciding to simply cut it up the middle to remove it since cutting out the area of fabric he would need to remove the bullet would render the shirt useless anyway.

Though now this meant that Sam could see the entire expanse of Barnes’s back. He might have been appreciative of the pretty picture his solidly defined muscles made, had he not been distracted by the countless scars that littered his skin. Barnes had been given a super soldier serum just like Steve had, but it seemed his knock-off serum didn’t give him the added benefit of healing his wounds up all nice and neat. Some of them appeared to be quite old, the newest seemingly a couple years old.

Forcing himself to look past the mottled network of scars and trying not to think about all the pain Barnes must have gone through getting those scars, Sam cleansed his hands with hand sanitizer before he broke the sterile field on the bag containing the forceps.. “Do you want something to bite down on?” he asked, his voice soft.

Barnes shook his head. 

Fuck. Sam could only imagine how many times Barnes had had to perform this on himself, knew how much it hurt. Before he could chicken out, Sam braced his hand on Bucky’s shoulder and inserted the forceps as gently as he could into the bullet wound. Luckily, it wasn’t very deep and Sam didn’t have to fish around for the bullet. Barnes was still sitting rigidly upright and Sam might have thought that he wasn’t at all affected by this could he not feel the way the muscles in Barnes’s neck had tightened when he inserted the forceps. 

“Almost got it,” he murmured, not sure if his reassurance was even doing anything to help Barnes feel better. Moments later, he was slowly pulling the forceps back out, and dropping the bullet into one of the disposal bags from the medkit. Barnes seemed to breathe a little easier once the bullet was out. Sam wiped the area around the bullet wound gently with an antiseptic wipe. 

Retrieving the needle and thread, Sam took a seat behind Barnes again, his hand that had been previously braced on his shoulder sliding down to press against his back to keep him still. Sam couldn’t help but notice how cool Barnes’s skin was and wondered if he felt cold. They were both silent for a few moments, but after Sam made the first pass with the suture, he began, “I won’t tell Steve I found you if you don’t want me to.”

“You didn’t find me, I let you catch up,” Barnes said hurriedly, as though he had to show off by stating this fact. Then, after a long pause, quieter, “You can tell him. Wouldn’t want him to lose hope. You know how he gets when he’s like that.”

Yes, Sam certainly did. There was nothing more dangerous than a Steve that didn’t have anything to lose. Hell, back in the day Barnes had been gone for all of a few weeks before Steve had nosedived the Valkyrie into the Arctic Ocean. “Hell, yeah, I do. Apparently, he jumps out of planes without a parachute.”

Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say, as the muscles of Barnes’s back immediately tensed under Sam’s hand. His voice was low when he responded, “He. Did. What?”

“I mean, uh,” Sam backpedaled, his brow furrowed as he continued on his work of sewing up the wound. “I heard it was just once, right after he woke up. Before he met me, because I wouldn’t let him pull that dumbass shit on my watch.”

There was another pause and then a muttered, “Fucking idiot,” that had Sam giving a faint little smile.

“Don’t worry, I’ll look after Steve until you get back, yeah?” And although Barnes didn’t reply to that, Sam figured his silence was all the acknowledgement he needed.

Neither of them said anything for the remaining time it took for Sam to sew up the wound, and after finishing the last few stitches he disposed of the materials and Barnes’s soiled cut-up shirt, before retrieving a fresh shirt from his bag and pressing it into Barnes’s hands. He watched as Barnes stood up and pulled the t-shirt on over his head, before he was apparently starting towards the door. Sam cut him off before he could, standing between him and the door.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

Barnes hesitated for a moment, eyes shifting this way and that. “...Do you honestly expect me to answer that?”

“I know you gotta do your own thing for a while, Steve doesn’t get it, but _I do_ , and that means going off on your own again. I ain’t gonna stop you, but what I ain’t gonna do is let you pass up sleeping in an actual bed for once,” Sam said, ushering Barnes back into the room.

His face seemed to flush a little bit. “But… there’s only one bed. Where are you gonna sleep?” 

“In the bed,” Sam stated as though that were completely obvious. “We’re both grown-ups, yeah? We can handle sharing a bed for one night. Now, _lay the fuck down before you rip your stitches_.” 

Barnes didn’t protest being ordered around like that, pulling back the covers before laying on the bed on his stomach, likely the only position that he would be able to sleep in without putting too much weight on his wound. Sam slid into the bed beside him, only pausing to toe off his shoes before he laid down with his back facing Barnes. “Turn the fucking light off, would you?” he asked, and moments later the bedside lamp was switched off and they were plunged into near complete darkness, the only sounds in the room being their quiet breaths. 

Sam wasn’t completely sure if Barnes would even sleep; he knew that it had to be hard for him to feel relaxed enough to fall asleep. But he wanted to give him the option, and know that Barnes was safe for at least a little while before he went running off again. Tired as Sam was, having been exhausted before he had to play nurse, it didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, feeling surprisingly relaxed having Barnes at his back. 

\---

When Sam awoke, Barnes was gone. The sheets were wrinkled where he had been sprawled out and as Sam reached out to touch his pillow, he could feel that it was cool. On the bedside table there was a note scrawled in surprisingly neat handwriting. 

_Take care of Steve for me._

**Author's Note:**

> hey, i'm not sure yet how many chapters this is gonna be, but it might take me a while to get the next one out, so i appreciate your patience!
> 
> i would love any feedback you guys have and maybe a kudos? thanks for reading! <3


End file.
